A monster most every weekday. Three adventure seeds a post.
Because Pathfinder and 3.5 are more fun than work.
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Monday, November 9, 2015

Avatarana

With their spindly limbs, arms instead of legs (giving them
the predatory slink of a jungle cat or mandrill), and distinctive flaps of
skin(?) over their faces, avataranas look like things out of a video game—and
guess what, it’s a horror title.(And
since you guys know that world a lot better than me, you’ll have to tell me
which one.)

Lots of rakshasas want to manipulate mortals, but avataranas
skip the details and just flat-out possess them, actually melting into their bodies.The Occult Bestiary details
their usual M.O. after that point:

[T]hey patiently work
their way up social ladders, finding more impressive and influential
individuals to possess […] but their viciousness increasingly shows. Only when others
turn against their victims do avataranas release their control, leaving their
prey to deal with the ramifications of the rakshasa’s acts.”

So first the issue is detecting the rakshasa, then the issue
is successfully confronting the outsider without killing the host, and ideally doing
so in a public setting so that the host’s innocence in the rakshasa’s vile
doings can be confirmed.And it’s that last
part that’s the tricky bit.Reputations
don’t respond to Heal checks, and in a game world without mass media, Diplomacy
and Profession (Barrister) checks will only get you so far…particularly against
a monster who’s probably been using mental magic left and right for weeks, if
not months or years, on the very people the PCs are trying to win over.Good luck!

Adventurers are being
fêted by vanaras after services to one of the ape-men’s gurus, only to be
framed for the murder of an occultist by the end of the banquet.They are kept on the run and sleepless throughout
the vanara temple complex, with friends becoming enemies the second the
rakshasa takes possession of them.

The Choker King
is neither a choker nor a doppelganger.He is an avatarana…and some of the chokers even whisper that he shaped
them in his own image.(The
doppelgangers are too proud to whisper such things, but privately some believe
it.)The chokers say you never know when
the king will chose to ride one of them (which also means that in game terms he
is Advanced enough to possess aberrations as well as humanoids).Certain doppelgangers have pieced together
there is a pattern to his killings, and quake with the knowledge that all their
race’s pitiful schemes and murders might be simply a smokescreen to hide his
real ends.The chokers simply know that
if you displease the Choker King, he’ll likely torture and murder your whole
clutch out of hand…and if you think the rack or crucifixion are awful, you
really haven’t seen them until you’ve seen them inflicted upon creatures whose
limbs stretch more than twice their own height…

In a sudden reversal
of policy, the head of the British Museum declares all Egyptian artifacts
to be pagan works that corrupt the national spirit, and demands they be
smashed. The head Egyptologist is
horrified and demands a party of adventurers investigate.(And since they are owed a substantial bounty
for recovering many of these artifacts from under the nose of Napoleon’s armies,
the adventurers have a vested interest in doing so.)The British Museum head is actually under the
possession of an avatarana who does not wish Britain to unlock the secrets of
the artifacts, as they could open the door to occult powers with the potential
to rival his own.Of course, if the
adventurers successfully drive out the rakshasa, they may have traded one evil
for another, because the Egyptology department has been thoroughly infiltrated
by worshippers of the Great Old Ones—cultists who very much want to see those
artifacts not only preserved and catalogued, but also put to use.

By the way, please forgive the occasional typos. I am aware of them, but disagreements between MS Word and the Blogger template make my entries nearly impossible to edit once posted. I blame gremlins. You can find a more polished version of this blog over on Tumblr.